Quick Tip: Using the Read More Tag

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This has come up more than once, so I thought it might be a good time to talk about the Read More tag and how to use it for your posts.

Sometimes you may not want an entire post to show up on your blog’s homepage. Maybe it’s super long, or maybe you’re trying to create suspense and entice readers to click through. (After all, more clicks means more pageviews!) Of course, you don’t want to be annoying about it - save the Read More tag for when you actually need it. A short post like this one doesn’t need a Read More tag, for example.

Using Read More on Blogger

To insert a Read More tag on Blogger, just skip to a blank line in the post editor and click this button:

Then go down to another blank line and continue your post. The part before the tag will show up on your homepage, and people can read the rest after they click.

Using Read More on WordPress

First of all, make sure you’re seeing all the options in the WP post editor. If you only have one line of buttons, click the last one on the right to open another line of options. (That’s a bonus tip!)

Anyway, to insert the Read More tag, go to a blank line and click this button:

Just like with Blogger, anything before that tag will be on the homepage, and anything after it will only show up when people click the Read More link.

One More Thing

Regardless of which platform you use, keep in mind that your RSS and email subscribers will still get the whole post. That is, assuming you’re publishing whole posts to your feed instead of excerpts, and I really hope you are - NO ONE likes partial feeds!